Broadband technologies jumpstart rural economies

Month: January 2019

The California Census Complete County Committee is working to ensure that all Californians are prepared for the first-ever online-only national Census in 2020. The Committee seeks Requests For Proposals from large foundations and community-based organizations (CBOs) with the administrative capacity and experience to help count the hardest-to-reach Californians. Learn about California Complete Census CBO Grant Opportunities. The deadline is January 31st.

Highlight added. I just received the Newsletter on Jan 24 and the Deadline is Jan 31.

There is more in the Newsletter, I highlighted this section to draw attention to the short suspense date for Grant Opportunities.

Race Communications announced Wednesday that a town hall meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Jan. 30 about the Bright Fiber high-speed internet project.

The town hall — at the Eric Rood Administrative Center, 950 Maidu Ave., Nevada City — will include a 10- to 15-minute presentation followed by a question-and-answer session, said Ally Hetland, with Race Communications, in an email.

“By now, you have heard that Race Communications has acquired Bright Fiber Network, and you’re probably wondering what that means for you as an advocate and supporter of the Bright Fiber project in western Nevada County,” a release states.

Race has said the project will bring a high-speed internet connection to almost 2,000 homes along Highway 174. The project’s completion is expected by May 2020.

NEW FEATURES FOR FIRSTNET USERS

Wi-Fi and Video Calling launched Jan. 4, 2019, on the Samsung Galaxy A6. Wi-Fi and Video Calling allow first responders on FirstNet first access to the FirstNet packet core in the event the LTE Radio Access Network is not accessible and public Wi-Fi® access is accessible.

Real Time Text launched Jan. 4, 2019, on the Samsung Galaxy A6 and LG Stylo 4+. Real Time Text is a TeleTYpeWriter alternative for hearing- or speech-impaired customers that sends text as it is typed. It is useful for making both every day and emergency calls. You start a text conversation like a voice call, but it is different from instant messaging and SMS. Both parties see text characters appear on their devices as they are typed.

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Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wants the FCC to set up an incentive auction of the 2.5 GHz spectrum. “This is the spectrum that could make 5G happen in our rural communities,” she said during an event hosted by the Internet Innovation Alliance. She recommended some proceeds go toward solving what she calls the homework gap harming those without broadband connectivity.

Source: POLITICO Morning Tech

It is good to know that someone in government recognizes that mmWave 5G technology is not the right solution for rural neighborhoods. The question is will policymakers listen and then act? While 2.5G goes farther than mmWave, it still has line-of-sight limitations.

Reading reports of internet growth over the past year, I learned that U.S. households consumed an average of 268.7 gigabytes (GB) of data in 2018. This is up from 201.6 GB for 2017, according to OpenVault, a leading provider of industry analytics and technology solutions for ISPs.

Some other findings by OpenVault:

In 2018 the percentage of households exceeding 1 terabyte of usage was 4.82%,

The rate of households using 1terabyte all more almost doubled in 2018, rising to 4.12% of all households up from 2.11% in 2017.

In 2018 the percentage of households exceeding 250 GB rose to 36.4% up from 28.4% in 2017.

Impressive growth across the board, indicating that consumption is growing across service providers’ entire subscriber bases, not just among the heavy users, good news for everyone with one exception. Rural households that do not have access to high-speed internet did not experience any of this growth.

According to reports by the California Public Utilities Commission, less than half of roughly 680,900 households in rural California have broadband access. And, many of those that are connected have services which do not meet the minimum standards of 6 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, or the FCC standard of 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up.

It is highly unlikely that rural households will get any high-speed internet access in the near term. The brightest light on the horizon is service by the LEO satellites that will be coming online in 2020, maybe late in 2019 at the earliest.

The Next Century Cities Toolkit offers a step-by-step guide on how to assess and establish your community’s broadband options.

Introduction

In 2018, the time has long passed since broadband access was optional. The internet has grown out of its luxury status and is now a bedrock ingredient for resilient communities. Fast, affordable, reliable broadband is essential to the long-term success of a community and to the health and happiness of its residents.

Cities, towns, and counties have an extraordinary amount of resources that can be leveraged to encourage investment in broadband infrastructure and ultimately lead to greater connectivity. While there is no one connectivity model that works for every community, there are common threads that run through the diverse array of successful projects. This toolkit is a compilation of those practices and the first-stop resource for any community seeking strategies and solutions to connect its residents.

I am reading Susan Crawford’s book Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It. She is a Professor at the Harvard Law School. Amazon’s summary of the book:

The world of fiber optic connections reaching neighborhoods, homes, and businesses will represent as great a change from what came before as the advent of electricity. The virtually unlimited amounts of data we’ll be able to send and receive through fiber†‘optic connections will enable a degree of virtual presence that will radically transform health care, education, urban administration and services, agriculture, retail sales, and offices. Yet all of those transformations will pale in comparison to the innovations and new industries that we can’t even imagine today. In a fascinating account combining policy expertise with compelling on†‘the†‘ground reporting, Susan Crawford reveals how the giant corporations that control cable and internet access in the United States use their tremendous lobbying power to tilt the playing field against competition, holding back the infrastructure improvements necessary for the country to move forward. And she shows how a few cities and towns are fighting monopoly power to bring the next technological revolution to their communities.

To my surprise, Nevada City/Grass Valley and John Paul of Spiral Internet has a role in the book. His fiber project is used as an example of the struggle that private citizens must endure while attempting to bring fiber to a community that does not recognize the economic potential and only provides lukewarm support for the project.

It is important that the community, the local government, have some skin in the game; the lack of such involvement in John Paul’s Nevada City/Grass Valley has made it very difficult for him to privately finance the building of the Chip Carman network.

This is only one of the ten references to Nevada City in Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It.

According to Crawford, Nevada City/Grass Valley are missing the fiber tech revolution.

Editor Note: Since Fiber was published, John Paul has sold his fiber project to Race Communications. Nevada City/Grass Valley may still get some economic fiber. If you want to understand the fiber network issues I highly recommend reading Crawford’s book.